


Spider-kid: Origins

by NixaSpark



Series: Spider-kid [1]
Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Gen, Marvel Universe, Occasional swearing, Spidersona, Superheroes, Superpowers, superhero origin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2020-05-30 20:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19410694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NixaSpark/pseuds/NixaSpark
Summary: Melly Minch thought that she'd always just be a normal person: someone who goes about their day-to-day business while the heroes of the world protect them. However, after a particularly strange night, she finds that she has gained powers of her own.Becoming a superhero was Melly's choice. The name? Not so much.





	1. One Strange Night

“...and that’s all I have for today’s class. Does anyone have any questions about Taylor’s perspectives before we wrap up?”

Melly Minch breathed a sigh of relief, closing her notebook as she began to join her classmates in preparing to leave the classroom. She was, admittedly, still a bit confused by the topic of the lecture that she had spent the past hour listening to, but ultimately didn’t really feel like asking questions on the subject. Philosophy was just a necessary evil that Melly needed to fill out her general course requirements. By next year, she would be able to fill her schedule with as many English and writing courses as she wanted. 

As she left the room, she could see a handful of other students, most of who were on their way out of the building through a set of doors further down the hallway. Stepping off to the side, Melly pulled out her phone. The screen lit up, displaying the time 5:31 in front of a red background.

 _Man, he really times out his lectures to take until the last minute,_ she thought to herself.

Melly swiped over to a messaging app, tapping on the first contact listed before beginning to quickly type out a message:

“Yo Hannah, guess who’s finally out of class?”

It wasn’t long after her message had been delivered before she received he reply.

Hannah: “Let me guess, you?”

Melly: “You bet!”

Melly: “You still down to grab dinner tonight?”

Hannah: “Can’t. I got an idea for the project Prof. P assigned us earlier this week, and I am in the ZONE”

Melly: “On a Friday? Curse the zone and its inescapability!!!”

Hannah: “Yeah… but I don’t think the zone would mind if dinner was brought to it ;) ”

Melly smirked a bit at her friend’s remark.

Melly: “Done. The usual?”

Hannah: “You know it! See you in 15 mins?”

Melly: “Yep! See you then”

Sliding her phone back into her pocket, Melly began to make her way towards the doors and out into the nearby quad. The late September air greeted her with a slight briskness, the sun having already become hidden by the tall skyscrapers that surrounded the campus of Danvers University. The quad itself was one of the smaller ones out of the few that were dotted across campus, only being as long as the classroom building she had just left. A few people could be seen making their way along the few paths that crossed the lawn, though a good number of them were either headed towards or gathered at the tables outside one of the buildings across the quad from Melly. She started to head towards them, jogging over part of the distance in order to get there quicker. She may have disliked philosophy, but she had to admit that being close to one of the campus food courts when her class let out was a plus.

Once inside, Melly weaved her way through the crowd of people waiting outside each of the shops and made her way over to a diner-themed stall. Friday night was always burger night for Melly and her roommate ever since they had first met at the beginning of their freshman year, and Melly had her friend’s order memorized by heart.

A few minutes later, Melly stepped out of the food court, a large, slightly greasy take-out bag and two drinks in hand, and started to make her way across campus. The number of people milling about had died down slightly, and the streetlights lined along each of the pathways flicked on as she came into sight of Hannah’s lab building. Like most of the other buildings on campus, the lab building seemed to have a glossy sheen to it, though it did at least look a bit more solid than the glass-lined towers that surrounded campus. It was certainly an impressive building, but Melly had always thought that whoever designed it was trying too hard to make it look artsy and ‘modern’. At least they had made it somewhat match the other buildings on campus.

Inside the building, Melly made her way up to the fourth floor, where the lab for Hannah’s class was. She passed several smaller workrooms on her way through the building, though only a few were still in use, with most of their usual occupants having already left for the weekend. Melly counted the room numbers in her head as she walked past.

 _425, 426… 427!_ She stopped at the door to one of the larger labs. Looking through the door’s narrow window into the room, Melly could see several clusters of worktables in various stages of disarray, with each desk having its own assortment of papers and equipment stacked on top of them. At the far corner of the room, neer a wall lined with large windows, she saw Hannah, hard at work. Balancing the bags of food in one arm, she slid her phone out of her pocket, snapping a photo through the window and sending it to Hannah.

Melly: “Guess where I am!!!”

Noticing her phone buzz, Hannah looked over at Melly’s message before turning around in her chair, an amused look on her face. Melly pressed her face up against the glass with a cheeky grin, holding up the burger bags for her friend to see. Standing up, Hannah swiftly walked over to the door and opened it.

“I’ve got a burger delivery for one engineer who takes her work way too seriously!” Melly joked. “Would that be you?”

“I think it is,” Hannah replied, “thought I definitely remember ordering a friend to go along with that burger. Did you remember to pick her up too?”

The two burst out laughing, Melly nearly losing her grip on one of the drinks she was holding.

“Alright, but seriously,” Hannah said, calming down. “Let’s break out these burgers, I’m starving.”

“Definitely! Mind helping me with these drinks?”

“Sure thing. Also, you know your backpack is unzipped, right?”

“No, not that it’s surprising. I swear the thing unzips on its own sometimes.”

The two walked back across the room to the desk where Hannah had been working at. Melly tossed her backpack up against the adjacent wall, and placed the food bags and drinks down on the table before hopping up to sit alongside them.

“Let’s see…” Melly said, beginning to distribute the food between the two of them. “One burger for you, no tomato, one burger for me, extra onions and pickles, an order of fries to split, along with a cold cup of Cheer for each of us.”

“Nice!” Hannah interjected, reaching over to grab her drink. “I seriously still can’t believe that the university-run burger joint is the only place on campus that sells it. I mean, isn’t it the low-key official soda of Centrum City or something like that?”

“It’s probably some corporate weirdness. Even the ones not vying to take over the world every other year have their quirks.”

“True.”

“But! I wasn’t finished yet.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. For you see, in addition to our regularly scheduled dinner, I have also brought-”

Melly reached into the bag, rummaging through the napkins that had haphazardly been stuffed into the bag for a moment, before pulling out a large tray of mozzarella sticks.

“-the sticks!”

As soon as she pulled them out of the bag, Melly could see her friend’s face light up.

“With the sauce?”

Melly reached back into the bag with her other hand, pulling out a few small containers of marinara sauce.

“Always with the sauce.”

The food distributed between the them, the two began to dig in. A few minutes was all either of them needed to finish of their burgers before they both turned to their shared side dishes.

“Man, nothing like a busy week at school to make you insanely hungry by the end of it,” Melly commented.

“No kidding.” Hannah replied. ‘I’ve been stressing over this project all week. He assigned it on Monday, but I was seriously drawing a blank on what to do for it until earlier today, hence the zonage.”

“So what is this project that you’re working on, anyway?”

Hannah, taking a quick sip from her drink, reached over for one of her notebooks and began to flip through it.

“The professor is having us design something based off of a superhero. Gadgets, mainly, but according to him almost anything even vaguely related is up for grabs. It’s sort of a ‘what if I had designed it’ scenario.”

“And he’s actually going to let you guys actually make all of this stuff?”

“Probably not. It’s more of a proof of concept.”

Melly paused before responding, taking the time to eat another handful of fries.

“So, what took you so long to figure out what you wanted to do for it? I mean, between you and me, we both know you’re super into anything hero-related.”  
Hannah shrunk into her seat, blushing slightly.

“I… couldn’t decide who I wanted to base mine off of. I’ve been throwing around possibilities around in my head since we got the assignment, but nothing really stuck. Until…” Hannah bent down underneath her desk, picking up a larger roll of paper that had been set aside. “... I got to this.”

Holding it in front of her, Hannah unrolled a portion of the paper to reveal several rough sketches of what appeared to be wings, ranging from realistic to more stylized and fantastical.

“I finally settled on re-creating Falcon’s wing pack, and I’ve just been going wild with the ways that I could put my own spin on it,” Hannah explained, pointing out a few of the more detailed sketches to her friend.”

“Wait, do you mean from before he became Captain America? Doesn’t he still have the wings even with the new title.”

“Yeah, but I’m admittedly a bit more partial to the old-tech look of the Falcon suit. I’ve never really been a fan of the all-in patriotic look.”

“But… that’s literally the point. He’s Captain America, after all.”

“Well, how about this: we’re supposed to be putting our own spin on it anyway, I’m just taking more visual inspiration from the original set. Besides, if someone wants to step up to take the Falcon title, I’ll have a fresh design ready for whoever that may be.” 

Hannah rolled the paper back up, sticking it between two stacks of papers at the end of her desk.

“Hey, fair enough,” Melly said, “though if I were doing this project, I would’ve definitely designed something based off of Spider-Man. You know, spiderbots or something like that.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure Oliver already laid claim to the spiderbots idea for this assignment.”

“Curses! Beaten to my own ideas once again,” Melly said, sliding down the edge of the table dramatically.

“Ah, don’t be so down about it. There’s plenty of other spider-related stuff you could choose from. I mean, you even have a choice between two whole Spider-men!”

“Don’t make me choose between them! I mean, sure classic Spidey is here in Centrum City, and Spider-Man N.Y. is pretty cool. But… I don’t know, I guess I just like their general vibe.”

“Is it the quips? They’re definitely a part of the theme at this point.”

“A bit. You know, if you could be a superhero and had to pick solely based on the quips you could make, who would you be?”

"Hmm… I think I’d—”

Before Hannah could finish, the room around them began to shake, knocking both of them off of their feet. The lights flickered out, and a thunderous sound filled the air, causing Melly to instinctively cover her ears. A flash of light from outside brightened the room with multicolored light, but quickly faded away. A few seconds passed before the shaking died down, and the lights of the room slowly faded back to normal. The two sat in silence for a moment longer, waiting to see if whatever had happened would pick up again.

“Hey, you alright?” Hannah said, speaking up first as she stood back up.

“Yeah,” Melly replied, her voice shaking slightly. “Nothing we’re not used to happening, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Hannah walked over to her friend, extending her hand towards her. “Need a hand?”

“Yeah,” Melly said, reaching up in turn.

Both friends standing once again, they began to glance around the room. Aside from a handful of loose objects that had been knocked off of desks, the building itself seemed relatively undamaged.

“Well, looks like we won’t have to worry about the building falling in on us, at least,” Melly joked. 

“Guess not,” Hannah said. “Come on, let’s see if there’s anyone else around who might have some idea as to what just happened.”

The two made their way over to the door, opening it and stepping out into the hallway. Contrasting the noise of whatever had happened, the building had since fallen into an eerie silence.

“I guess we’re the only ones here,” Melly said. “I mean, it is a Friday, after all.”

“Nah, I know at least a couple of guys who tend to work even later than I normally do.” Hannah replied. “Besides, with something like that, there’s gotta be somebody who-”

Before Hannah could finish speaking, a door at the far end of the hallway slammed open. Whipping their heads around towards the sudden noise, they saw a taller man emerging from one of the classrooms a long coat billowing behind him, walking with quick but heavy steps. He seemed unaware of Melly and Hannah’s presence, instead turning towards the entrance to an adjacent stairwell, his footsteps fading away as he began to descend. After a moment, the two once again found themselves in silence.

“Definitely not suspicious in the slightest,” Melly quipped.

“You know, I’m still curious about what just happened, but I don’t think this one’s a thread I want to pull on at this particular moment.” Hannah quipped back.

Heading back into the lab, the two took another moment of silence, though this time it was mainly due to the spontaneity of it all: the lights, the man… whatever had just happened, both of them still weren’t entirely sure what to think about it.

“Well,” Melly said with an exasperated huff, “I should probably go ahead back to the room before any other weirdness decides it wants to stop by.”

“Yeah, same here, though I should probably at least try to clean up some of this stuff first,” Hannah said, looking around at the papers and books that were now strewn across the ground.

“Fair enough.” Melly said. “See you back in the room later?”

“As always. Maybe we can put in a movie?”

“Sure, but I call dibs on choosing which one!”

“As if our taste in movies would really make a difference in what we’ll end up watching.”

Melly retrieved her backpack, zipping it closed before slinging it onto her back. Giving a quick wave back to Hannah, she made her way to the door. Grabbing the doorknob, Melly hesitated for a moment, remembering the figure she and Hannah had seen earlier. She cautiously opened the door, peering out into the hallway. It was empty, like the two had left it moments ago. Keeping a eye on the far end of the hall, she made her way to a set of stairs a few doors further down from the lab, and quickly made her way down to the ground floor and out of the building.

She stood at the door for a moment, staring out across campus and into the brightly lit skyscrapers of the city around her. Everything still looked as normal as it had earlier that day— nothing seemed to be missing, or changed in any significant way.

 _Nothing’s wrong,_ she told herself. _It was just some weird lights and noises. That’s it. The sky’s not going to come falling down just because someone’s high-tech project decided it wanted to act up._ Even so, Melly couldn’t stop herself from worrying. All of this was way out of her league. Even if she knew where to start, what would she be able to do about it?

“Hey kid!”

A voice called out from somewhere in front of, and slightly above, Melly. Looking around, it took her a moment to spot the figure that had perched himself on top of one of the nearby lampposts. Hopping down to ground level, the hero’s red suit was instantly recognizable as the classic Spider-Man himself. 

“First off, I’m not a kid,” Melly called back to Spider-Man. “Besides, what teenager would be hanging out outside a class building on a Friday night, especially on a college campus?”

“Hey, you never know,” Spider-Man replied. “But I’ve found that the terms ‘kid’ and ‘student’ get thrown around so much that at some point they’re pretty interchangeable.”

“Whatever,” Melly said, slightly annoyed. She knew Spider-Man was just joking around, but she had been mistaken for a kid enough times while at college for her to become perpetually annoyed whenever someone brought it up. 

“But seriously,” Spider-Man continued, “I’m over this way because I heard that some weird stuff just happened around this building, maybe five or ten minutes ago. Did you see anything strange over here?”

“Well,” Melly began, “I suppose we did have some weird lights start flying around. Weird sounds, weird shaking, weird guy fleeing the scene. Probably the usual for you.”

“Somewhat, though I’ve found that each iteration of the usual grind comes with its own unique twist sooner or later. Anything stick out about the guy you saw?”

“Not really. Trenchcoat, never looked at us, seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Us?”

“My friend and I. She’s still up in one of the lab rooms cleaning up some of the stuff that got knocked over by the aforementioned Weird Thing.”

“Hey, I’ve always been an advocate of keeping a clean workspace, though I can’t say my own desk reflects that sentiment.”

“You have a desk? What is it, a spider-desk or something?”

“Just your average desk. Hero stuff is fun and all, but I’ve still got to pay the bills somehow.”

“Fair enough.”

“Well, as much as I’d like to hang around a bit longer, it seems I have a mysterious trenchcoat man to track down, starting with whatever went down here.”  
“The fourth floor would be the place to start. That’s where Hannah and I saw the guy. She’d probably let you in if you swing up to the window.”

“Thanks, kid. I’ll see you around!” With this final remark, Spider-Man shot a web up towards the top of the building, pulling himself up and away from Melly.  
“Not a kid,” she muttered to herself, turning towards the path back to the dorms.

By the time she arrived back at her dorm room, she felt like she had swung between relief and self-critique a half dozen times. One one hand, she was relieved that there was someone looking into the event that would be able to look into whatever had happened. On the other, she continued to run over her exchange with Spider-Man over and over. Had she been too snarky? Should she have said something with a different tone? Even with Spider-Man being one of the more approachable heroes around, she still worried that she hadn’t given off a good first-impression, as impromptu conversations go.

 _So what if the conversation hadn’t played out the way you thought it would,_ Melly thought, trying to compromise between the two conflicting thoughts. _He’s taking care of whatever happened in the lab tonight. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. Besides, how likely is it that you’ll run into him like that again? First impressions don’t really last if you never speak past the first meeting, anyway._

Flicking on the lights, Melly tossed her backpack to the side of her desk as she threw herself into her chair, the events of the night still swirling in her head.

_The lights…_

An idea sparked in Melly’s head, unfolding into a variety of different tangents and possibilities. She had been meaning to start writing a new story for some time now, but hadn’t found a concept that fit for her— until now. 

She had to write this down. Right now.

Turning back to her bag, Melly unzipped it and pulled out the spiral-bound notebook she always carried around, in case a moment like this popped up while she was out and about. Yet reaching into the bag’s side pocket, she was surprised to find that her pencils, which she would normally keep there, were missing.

 _I must have forgotten to take them out of my notebooks form earlier,_ Melly thought. She reached back into the bag’s main pocket, fishing around with her hand in search of the elusive writing instrument. However, as she closed two of her fingers around one of the pencils, she felt something else in the bag poked her hand.

In that first moment, Melly assumed that she must have bumped into the corner of one of her other notebooks. Yet as she moved to take her hand out of her bag, she felt another tap, then another, until the skittering feeling sent shivers up her spine.

Startled, she yanked her arm up and out of the bag, along with whatever else had been touching it.

She had just enough time to see the fist-sized spider as it bit her hand.


	2. The Spider

Earlier that day, several rooms down from where Melly and Hannah were sitting, there was a spider.

There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about this spider. Though it was certainly on the larger end of what someone may think when spiders are brought up, being able to fit comfortably into an average person’s hand, it was, in all regards, a normal spider.

Though the spider didn’t typically reside in the engineering lab building, it had been brought in by one of the other students in Hannah’s class as part of the project they had been assigned earlier in the week. The student had planned to design spider-shaped robots, or ‘spiderbots’ as he referred to them, and had made arrangements with the university’s entomology lab to borrow one of their specimens to observe. Thus the spider had found itself in its current location, occupying a comfortably sized container on one of the desks in room 408.

On this particular evening, the spider had just begun to stir as the light from outside grew dimmer. It had spent most of the day sleeping, and generally ignoring all else that was going on in the room. Sensing one of the crickets that had been added to its enclosure earlier in the day, and set about collecting it for its next meal.

The spider hardly took notice when the first figure, a tall, cloaked man, slipped into the room. It had become used to the constant in and out of the students and faculty that frequented the room, and, so long as they didn’t approach its container, it saw no need to pay close attention to them. It was a short time later, when a second figure, a younger man, entered the room, that the spider took notice. As simple as it was, it could sense something… off. Not about the figure himself, but of something they carried with them. Something different. Something dangerous.

The two figures began to speak.

“Oh, you’re already here,” the second to arrive said.

“You expected me to be late?” the tall man asked. “I take the matters I attend to seriously, and that includes ensuring that we would be left unbothered for our meeting.”  
“Of course. Not that this should take long anyways.”

“Then let’s proceed. Did you bring what we discussed?”

The second individual slid a bag off of his shoulder, and fished around inside it for a moment before pulling out a cube-like object. One side of the cube was marked by a number of flat, unlabeled buttons, while another contained what appeared to be an inset hatch.

“As if I would show up without it,” the younger man said. “It certainly took long enough to sort through my father’s things to find it, seeing as no one took the effort to keep things organized when they were stored away.”

The cloaked man was silent for a moment, eyes skimming from the cube to the younger man a few times.

“Is that it?”

The younger man was caught off-guard by the cloaked figure’s question.

“It? This is the object we had discussed, I can assure you. Does it not meet your expectations?”

“If you recall,” the tall man began, “I requested that you bring both the object as well as the research he had conducted on it. I obviously see that you have brought an object, but I notice a lack of the latter part of my query.”

“The research? An object?” the younger man said, offended. “You think I didn’t search through every corner, every file that my father left to me? Whatever research he had done on this, whatever this contains, is either lost or has been taken elsewhere.”

“You must understand, not only is your father’s research vital to expediting the process of my own intentions, but it also serves to verify the contents of the cube you have brought. I wouldn’t want to find myself disappointed if I were to leave with the wrong item.”

The younger man was growing visibly angrier.

“Disappointed? We had an agreement. I brought what I was able to find, nothing less. I upheld my end, now you uphold yours.”

“I have no intentions of withholding what I have promised. I just seek assurance that--”

“If assurance is what you want, fine. Let’s see if what is in this cube is what you were expecting, then.”

The younger man quickly turned the cube around in his hand, placing a finger over one of its buttons. The eyes of the cloaked man widened, and he lunged towards the other man.

“Don’t--” he began to yell, but he was too late.

As soon as the man’s finger pressed the button, the hatch on the side slid open, and the two figures were blinded by a bright flash, emanating from the thing that was now emerging from the cube. The room began to shake, and an ear-piercing sound rang through the air as the thing exploded out into several different colored fragments, each quickly zipping about and crashing through the lab’s window, soaring out into the night.

All except for one, that is.

The spider had been closely watching the two men throughout their conversation, despite not being able to understand any part of what was transpiring between the two. It was just a spider, after all. As soon as the device opened, every inch of its being screamed for it to run, but having been housed in a fairly solid container, it was unable to do so. The flash came, stunning the spider as it had the two men, leaving it defenseless as the red bolt of light crashed into its enclosure, sending it crashing down onto the floor.

If any other sort of bolt had hit the spider, it would have surely resulted in the end of the spider’s already shortened life. Yet the energy contained within the thing released from the cube was nothing like your typical repulsor blast or bolt of lightning. In the split second that the bolt crashed into the cage, the spider changed. And, as it was thrown to the ground along with the rest of its living space, it began to think.

 _Oh shit!_ the spider thought.

As the container hit the floor, its lid came loose, sending it and the spider tumbling across the room. The spider hurried to right itself, and frantically began scanning the room for a way out.

 _The main entrance!_ it though, heading towards the door. However, rounding around one of the room’s desks, it caught sight of the two men, still reeling from the blinding flash.

 _No, bad things that way. Bad people. People?_ Its thoughts flitted around, barely able to keep track of the storm of information building within its own mind. _Must be another way out, somewhere!_

Turning towards the side of the room, it caught sight of an air vent poking down from the ceiling.

_A hole. A way out!_

It quickly scurried over to and up the wall with newfound energy, squeezing through the slats of the vent. It hurried down the length of the air duct, only slowing down as it approached the far side of the building. It came to a stop at one of the last few ventilation grates, and peered down into the room below. The lights were still on, but it otherwise appeared to be empty at the moment. The spider recklessly squeezed its way through the opening, popping out on the other side and falling almost all of the way to the floor before managing to catch itself with a fortunately-timed strand of webbing. It swung in the air for a moment, before dropping itself the rest of the way to the ground.

 _I shouldn’t have done that,_ it thought. _Definitely shouldn’t do it again. Too dangerous!_

The spider skittered around for a moment, taking stock of its new surroundings.

_Is it safe?_

“Definitely not suspicious in the slightest,” a voice from across the room stated.

The spider jumped at the sudden voice. Though it took some note of the fact that, somehow, it could actually understand the voice, the realization that it was still not alone jump-started its urge to hide once more. It skittered towards the back of the room, away from the two new figures that now seemed to be heading its way. As it approached the wall, it spotted a backpack slouched up against it, its zipper bulging open on one side.

_In there!_

Clambering up into the bag, the spider quickly nestled itself among the notebooks and other miscellaneous items that had worked their way down into the bottom of the bag. It waited anxiously, hearing the two figures exchange words briefly. One of them seemed to draw closer and the spider, along with the bag, found itself being hoisted into the air, the zipper sliding closed.

 _I’m trapped!_ The spider began to panic.

The person exited the building, stopping briefly to talk to another individual that the spider didn’t recognize. The exchange didn’t last long, and thus the person continued to walk, bouncing their unseen passenger along. After walking for what seemed like ages to the spider, the person entered another building. The bag was tossed aside with a thunk, landing against some upright surface.

The spider stayed still, frozen in fear. Today really had not been the spider’s day, between mysterious figures, being taken off to who knows where, and slowly coming to the realization of its own individuality, the latter of which had yet to hit in full force.

 _Maybe the human didn’t notice me,_ it thought. _Maybe it will just keep doing whatever its doing out there, and I can sneak out later._

As soon as the thought had passed through its mind, the bag was unzipped, and the human’s hand reached down into the bag.

_It noticed me!_

It was all or nothing for the spider now. Flight was near impossible; all it could do was fight.

As the hand swept around in the bag, it bumped into the spider, who instinctively clung on to it. The hand paused momentarily, before being swiftly yanked out of the bag and directly into the sights of the person it was attached to.

 _Fuck!_ It thought, and in a split second it had sunk its fangs into the human’s hand.

“Fuck!” Melly, the human, exclaimed. She shook her hand rapidly, sending the spider flying across the room, onto the top of a set of drawers.

Melly sat in silence for a moment. Today had already been weird enough, but she certainly hadn’t expected the weirdness to follow her back to her dorm room. The dull pain from her hand drew her attention back to it, where a red welt had already begun to form in the spot where the spider had bitten her.

 _Okay, spider bites,_ she thought, trying to keep herself collected. _What do you do for spider bites?_

Melly was, in no way, her own first choice when it came to first-aid, but she would have to suffice on what she knew until Hannah, or someone like her RA Abbie, got back to the suite. Even so, Melly was still working under the presumption that the spider wasn’t venomous. At least, it hadn’t appeared to be any of the venomous ones she had heard about before.

 _Ice. I think you’re supposed to… ice it?_ She hopped over to her and Hannah’s shared mini-fridge, and opened the door to the freezer. Empty.

 _Alright, so no ice,_ she continued. _Cold water, maybe?_

She skirted out of her room, turning and heading into her suite’s bathroom. Making a beeline for the sink, she flipped the faucet to as cold as it would go and stuck her hand under the running water. Staring intently at it, she could almost swear that the area around the bite had begun… glowing?

Melly chuckled to herself. It was probably just a trick of the light. What was she expecting to happen, to suddenly get powers or something? As if.

However, as she continued to stand there, she could feel a dull throbbing begin in the back of her head. Though she thought nothing of it at first, it steadily gained in intensity to the point where she couldn’t ignore it. 

_Are you sure that spider wasn’t one of the venomous ones?_ Melly asked herself, starting to worry.

Turning off the water, she began to head back to her room. Maybe, if the spider was still there, she could get a better look at it and look up what type it was, to either put her worries to rest or to legitimize them.

She left the bathroom, briskly walking the short distance back to her room. However, as she stepped through the doorway, she began to hear a small, wispy voice somewhere close by.

_“I’ve got to hide, I’ve got to hide, I’ve got to hide!”_

Melly paused for a moment, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. Scanning the room, her attention was drawn to one of the room’s corners… behind the dresser?

“Hello?” Melly asked. “Is someone in here?”

The voice went silent for a few seconds, before picking up again with heightened nervousness.

_“It knows I’m here! I’ve got to run, no, got to hide!”_

Melly slowly approached the dresser. Crouching down, she peered around into the space between the drawers and the wall. Not knowing what to expect, she prepared herself for anything, yet she was nevertheless surprised to find none other than the spider, who had also taken notice of her.

 _“It’s here!”_ it exclaimed, trying to clamber up the wall at the back of the space. _“It’s gonna catch me and eat me and--”_

“Hey, it’s alright,” Melly said. “I’m not going to eat you or anything, I’m just… *very* confused about several different things at the moment.”

The spider slowed its attempts to scale the wall, turning to face Melly.

 _“You’re… not?”_ it asked warily.

“Nah. Humans don’t really eat spiders. At least, I haven’t met anyone that has.”

It settled down a bit more, and seemed to become less tense. Melly held her hand down into the crack, extending it to the spider.

“Here, let me help you out of there.”

The spider hesitated.

_“But what if you throw me again?”_

“I won’t. Just… don’t bite me again, alright?”

After pausing for another moment, the spider slowly crawled its way up into Melly’s palm. She gingerly lifted it up as she stood, trying not to startle it. Now in the full light of the room, Melly was finally able to get a good look at the spider. Like she had seen in the small glimpse of it, it was about as big has her hand. Fairly normal for a spider, but that’s about where anything normal about the spider ended. It was bright red in color, and bore an odd mark on its abdomen that resembled a four-pointed star. It also seemed to be, for lack of a better description, more animated than what was usually expected for spiders.

Melly took the spider over to her desk, letting it crawl down onto its top as she sat down in the adjacent chair.

“See? Nothing to worry about.” she told it.

 _What are you doing?_ A part of Melly yelled. _This spider bit you, and you’re just… having a conversation with it? Like nothing about this is weird in any way?_

Yet, for some reason, this part of her mind had become muffled, obscured to a point where she barely even took note of it. Even her worries about the bite and her headache had begun to fade into a background of unnatural calm.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Melly began, “how did you end up in my bag to begin with? I’m pretty sure big spiders like you aren’t super common around here.”

 _“Well, uh,”_ the spider said. _“I was trying to hide. From you, a bit, but also from those weird lights that were let out.”_

“The lights? Yeah, those were really weird. Especially with all the loud noises and shaking they caused.”

 _“Does that happen… all the time? I suppose I hadn’t really thought about it before…”_ The spider trailed off for a moment. _“...before I started thinking?”_

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re here now, thinking now, just roll with it. Besides, stuff like that doesn’t usually happen often, so long as the heroes are all doing their jobs.”

_“Heroes? What are they?”_

“Well, who rather than what. They’re people who can do a lot of cool stuff, and they zoom around saving people, stopping the world from ending, stuff like that. You know, there’s even a hero called Spider-Man. Two of them, actually!”

_“Wow, that sounds pretty cool, but also pretty scary.”_

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I’ve sort of wanted to be a hero since I was a kid, you know, to be able to change the world for the better and everything.”

_“So you’re going to be a hero, like the ones you talked about?”_

“Nah. I mean, I’d like to, but I don’t really have any--”

Melly was cut short by a spike in pain from her head. She doubled over in her chair, hands pressed up against her skull.

 _“What’s wrong? Are you alright?”_ the spider asked.

“Yeah… I just… started getting this weird headache earlier. Hurts like crazy.”

Melly took a minute, rubbing her temple in a bid to ease the pain somewhat. Eventually, it subsided back to the dull throbbing it had started as, yet her mind seemed to stay as hazy as ever.

“You know,” she said, sitting back up, “if we’re gonna get to know each other, there’s got to be something I can call you. You know, like a name or something.”

 _“A name?”_ the spider wondered. _“I guess I never really had one before. What should it be?”_

“Well, I guess it can be anything, really. You just have to pick something that you think fits.”

 _“Hmm…”_ the spider thought for a minute. _“How about Red? It feels… right, I guess.”_

“Well, nice to meet you Red. I’m Melly.”

Melly held out her hand, extending one finger out to the spider. It, in turn, held out one of its front legs, and the two shook hands. Or, at least, as close as you can get to shaking hands with only a finger and a spider leg.

Melly smiled, a small chuckle slipping out.

She and Red were going to be great friends.


	3. Brain Fuzz and Hand Lasers

Melly’s eyes opened. 

Daylight filtered through the nearby window, dancing around as one of the trees right outside swayed in the wind. Lying on her back, she stared up at the ceiling… and the bottom of her lofted bed.

_Wait, why am I on the floor?_

Her senses began to return as she moved to sit up, with the resulting feeling nearly causing her to fall back down. Her whole body felt like it had been hit by a truck, primarily in the rhetorical sense seeing as she lacked any similar past experiences to compare it to.

“Ugh…” she grunted, stiffly propping herself up. Glancing around the room, she noticed that several of the piles of books and papers that she usually kept had been knocked over. Also, oddly enough, she found that her pillow and one of her sheets had been moved down to the floor as well, the latter of which had been twisted and crumpled up in her sleep.

She racked her brain, trying to think back to the previous night. She remembered everything from the lab with Hannah, her encounter with Spider-Man, but after getting back to her room… everything was blurry. Though the headache Melly remembered having had seemingly cleared up, it was replaced with a jittery feeling that felt more along the lines of ‘weird’ rather than being outright painful. The feeling seemed to rise and fall at random intervals, with no clear cause as to why.

_Well, this is annoying,_ Melly thought. _Hopefully whatever this is won’t stick around for too long._

As if called by an ironic cue, the feeling in Melly’s head suddenly spiked up, making the whole world seem like it was vibrating around her. Her head swam for a moment, overtaken by the sudden surge to her senses. However, almost as soon as it began, it stopped, causing Melly to jerk to attention.

_Someone is coming._

She could feel each footstep as it hit the floor, steadily making their way closer to, and stopping in front of, her room. Her muscles tensed up, her eyes fixed to the door. The knob turned slowly, every second stretching out in anxious anticipation. The lock clicked, and the door swung open, revealing the person on the other side.

It was Hannah.

“Melly!” she exclaimed, dropping the grocery bag she had been holding and hopping over to her roommate. “You’re up!”

Melly let out the breath she had been holding. Of course it was Hannah. Who else would have the keys to their room? She wasn’t sure why she had gotten so worked up over it.

“Yeah,” Melly replied. “Why--”

“Are you feeling any better?” Hannah interrupted. “I went to get some stuff for you from the store, but I wasn’t quite sure what you were going to need. Abbie told me about a few things when I talked to her earlier, but--”

“Woah, Hannah, slow down. I guess I’m mostly fine, though I still feel like crap. But, bigger question: why was I sleeping on the floor? I remember maybe 10 percent of what happened last night, and even that part’s pretty blurry.”

“Look, I’m not entirely sure what you did after you left the lab, but when I got back to the room, you were acting really weird. Like, the bad kind where you know something’s up, not the normal kind. I thought that you’d just fall off your bed if I managed to get you up onto it, so I just grabbed your pillow and stuff once you… fell asleep? Passed out? I was freaking out too much to tell!”

“Bad weird?” Melly questioned, falling back onto her pillow. “Was I… talking about anything? Doing anything in particular? Trust me, I want to put this together as much as you do, but you’ve got to give me more to work with here.”

Hannah thought for a moment.

“Well, I guess you were talking a lot about a spider… being your friend?”

The pieces clicked into place in Melly’s mind. The bite. The conversation. A part of her still thought it was a dream, but what if...

“Holy shit,” Melly said under her breath. She shot upright again, and began to quickly look around the room. “Where’s Red?”

“Hey, woah, what?” Hannah said, growing more concerned. “You’re still a bit out of it, maybe--”

Melly’s mind drowned out the rest of her friend’s words, instead focusing on the tiny voice she heard from the direction of her desk.

_“I’m here!”_ Red said. _“The other human came in, and I got scared again… I didn’t know what she’d do if she saw me!”_

“It’s alright, she’s a friend!” Melly said, walking closer to the desk. “If you come out, I could… introduce you?”

“Melly, seriously, maybe you should-- woah, uh, that’s a spider!” Hannah grabbed Melly’s hand to try and calm her down, interrupting herself when she caught sight of the unusually colored spider crawl out from behind a stack of textbooks.

“See? Everything’s alright,” Melly said to Red before turning back towards Hannah.

“That’s… uh… that’s a big red spider,” Hannah sputtered out. “A big red spider that’s actually here, in the room right now, not an illusion, right?”

“Right! A big red spider that I’ve been… talking to… and it’s been… talking back…” 

As Melly replied to Hannah, the combined absurdity, and reality, of the situation came crashing down onto her.

“Hhhhhohmygosh,” she wheezed, sliding back down onto the floor. “All of that actually happened.”

_“Melly? Are you okay?”_ Red asked, cautiously making her way to the edge of the desk. 

“No. Yes. I… don’t know?” Melly brought her free hand up to her face, the other still being held by Hannah.

“Okay, this is all still pretty weird... not that it ever stopped being weird,” Hannah said, getting down onto the floor with Melly, “but given the definitely real spider-- you called it, uh, Red, or something?-- we can explain at least some of what I walked into last night. Though I still have no idea how any of it got started. Could you maybe explain?”

“Well,” Melly began, “From what Red told me, she was in the lab with us when the lights and stuff happened last night, and accidentally hitched a ride in my bag while she was trying to hide. I went to grab something from my bag, Red bit me, and a few minutes later was when I started to hear her talking. Followed shortly by the aforementioned ‘acting weird’.”

“And? Anything else?”

“...Nothing else, really. I mean, I guess I did run into Spider-Man on the way back.”

“Wait, you too?” Hannah said, the two starting to get a bit side tracked. “He showed up at the window of the lab a few minutes after you left, said he was investigating the lights and stuff. Isn’t it pretty cool? We got to help out Spider-Man!”

“Yeah, but…”

“But?”

“I feel like I totally flubbed it! Probably the one time I’ll get the chance to talk to him, and I just jumped to telling him off for calling me a kid!” Melly threw her hands up expressively, accidentally dragging Hannah’s hand along with the gesture.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, he was probably too focused on investigating the thing to notice,” Hannah said reassuringly. “But also, Mels… could you let go of my hand?”

“Oh, sorry,” Melly said. She hadn’t realized that she had still been holding it from when Hannah had reached out earlier. Moving to release her roommate’s hand, she realized that there was a small problem:

She wasn’t holding Hannah’s hand.

Though their hands were touching, there didn’t seem to be anything that would have stopped Hannah of moving her hand away of her own accord. Even as Melly moved her own hand around, trying to move it away from Hannah’s, they seemed to be, for lack of a better term, stuck together.

“Seriously, Melly,” Hannah said, trying to move her arm away only to find Melly’s being pulled along.

“I…” Melly said, confused. “I think my hand is stuck.”

“No. No way,” Hannah said, shaking her hand around a bit more. “This-- did you put glue on your hand or something?”

“No!” Melly exclaimed. “I don’t--” Melly stood up, yanking her arm back towards herself.

“Ow! Hey, don’t rip my arm off!” Hannah exclaimed back, stumbling at the force behind Melly’s pull.

“Sorry!"

The two circled around each other for another minute, taking turns trying to detach their hands from one another. No amount of pulling or prying seemed to be able to break whatever was holding them together.

Finally, after taking one full circle too many, Melly’s leg became tangled in the sheet that she had left on the floor, and, with another misstep, found herself falling backwards. In her moment of surprise, their hands separated, sending Hannah flying backwards onto her bed. Melly, on the other hand, expected herself to land butt-first on the floor, same as the last several times she had slipped on one object or another that she had left lying around. However, as if by instinct, she felt herself flip around in mid-air, landing with an unusually perfect one-hand handstand.

Hannah stared at Melly.

Melly stared at Hannah.

“Okay. Seriously, Melly,” Hannah said, breaking the silence. “What the actual hell?”

“I… I don’t know!” Melly said, flipping herself into a seated position. “It’s not like any of this was happening yesterday!”

Almost as soon as she had said the words, the connecting spark popped into her head. She turned slowly, until she was looking directly at Red.

“Red,” Melly said, “What did you do?”

_“Me?”_ Red asked nervously.

“Yes, you! You’re a literal talking spider, and you biting me seems like it kicked off everything weird that has happened in my life for the past twelve hours. Not even including a few of the things that happened before that!”

“Uh, Mels,” Hannah butted in. “I don’t mean to make things weirder but… you do know I can’t hear… Red… talk, right?”

Melly swiveled back around to look at Hannah, and exasperated look on her face.

“So… hold on, let’s put this all together real quick. I’ve got sticky hands, persisting brain fuzz, the ability to pull off a handstand for once in my life--” she turned back to Red “--and I can communicate with exactly one sentient arachnid.”

She leaned back, staring upwards and jokingly pointing a finger at the ceiling.

“What’s next, hand lasers?”

I guess, the universe apparently replied.

With Melly’s gesture, a strand of light shot out from her finger, traveling upwards and attaching itself to the ceiling. All three of them, both humans and spider, froze in place, the new revelation taking a few seconds to fully process.

“You know,” Melly finally spoke. “I really should be surprised. Freaking out, even. But I might as well roll with it at this point.”

Still on the floor, Melly observed the strand more closely. It almost seemed to be made of light, giving off a soft reddish glow. It didn’t seem to have really come out of her finger. Rather, the end of the strand seemed to fade as it reached it, though it still seemed to be attached in some way, being pulled along with her hand as she waved it back and forth. She followed the strand with her eyes up to the point above her where it had hit the ceiling. Towards the end, it had divided itself into a series of smaller strands, spread out in a roughly circular shape and roped together by even smaller strands. The closer she looked at it, the more it began to appear like a web of sorts.

_A spider web…_

“Hey, Hannah, are you starting to see the theme that I’m seeing?” Melly asked.

“What? The fact that you got bit by a spider, and now you’re sticking to stuff and can apparently shoot… webs?” Hannah replied, also taking note of the pattern the strand had taken. “Kind of hard to not notice it at this point.”

_“Oh! Is it like the heroes you told me about last night?”_ Red asked.

“Exactly.” Melly said. “Not that everything’s exactly the same, though. I haven’t heard anything about either Spider-Man being able to make their own webs; both of them use some sort of tech to do it.”

“I mean, not even they have the exact same powers, if you think about it,” Hannah added. “New York’s Spider-Man has his venom strike ability, and he can also turn invisible. Classic Spidey doesn’t have either of those powers.”

“That’s true… though it also means I’m gonna have to figure out some of this stuff as I go.” 

She took another long look at the web.

There’s got to be more to this than just… a line, she thought. She reached up, wrapping her hand around the end of the web and giving it a small tug, trying to see what it would do.

She expected it to detach, hopefully not bringing any of the ceiling down with it.

She did not, however, expect to be yanked upwards,

Reacting in an instant, she swung her free hand and legs upward, catching herself before she could collide with the ceiling. Fortunately, with her previously discovered sticking abilities, she didn’t immediately fall back to the ground, instead staying attached to where she had landed.

“Woah!” Hannah exclaimed, jumping back a bit at Melly’s sudden ascent. “Was… did you just do that? With the web?”

“Seems like it,” Melly replied. “My guess? I was able to make it shorter, or something like that, to pull myself up. I pretty much landed right on top of where it was, at least.”

“Retractable webs? I’ll put them on the list.”

As Hannah spoke, the buzzing in the back of her head began to spike once more, giving a similar read to what she had felt earlier.

“Hannah, someone’s coming.”

“Hmm?” Hannah turned towards the door. After a brief moment of thought, she glanced down at her phone. “Oh! It could be Abbie. I ran into her earlier, when I went out to get stuff for you, and she said she was going to drop by and check in on you at some point. You know, on account of the weird night you were having.”

Melly relaxed a bit, not realizing she had tensed up in the first place.

“But…” Hannah continued. “You might want to hop back down before she gets here.”

“Right,” Melly said. “I’ve just got to…”

Melly shifted her feet to prepare herself for the drop onto the floor. Or, at least, she tried to. She continued to pull, only stopping when she heard the ceiling begin to crack under the strain. The last thing she wanted was to have to pay for damages to their dorm room, especially since ‘missing chunk of the ceiling’ was something you couldn’t exactly just shove your bed in front of and pretend that it didn’t exist. Gently testing with her other foot, then her hands, she found herself-- once again-- stuck.

“Hey, Hannah,” Melly said, tensing up again. “I think getting down is going to be a problem.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Okay, okay… what should we do?” Hannah asked. “She knows I came back to the room, so not answering is not an option. But making sure she doesn’t see you on the ceiling is also pretty important!”

“I don’t know!” Melly said, still trying to pull herself free. “Just… don’t let her come in, I guess?”

Another knock on the door.

“Melly--”

“It’s fine!”

Hannah paused for another moment before turning towards the door.

_Please let Abbie not see me up here…_ Melly thought as Hannah cracked open the door to greet their concerned RA.

“Hannah, hi!” Abbie said to Hannah. “I was just dropping by really quick to check on Melly. You said she wasn’t feeling well last night?”

“Yeah,” Hannah said, trying to not let her panic show on her face. “She… caught a stomach bug or something. Went and picked up the stuff you told me about, hopefully those will help out when she wakes up.”

“Oh, sorry!” Abbie said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I didn’t realize she was still asleep.”

“She woke up a few minutes ago, but pretty much went right back to sleep. One of the best ways to beat the bugs is to rest up, right?”

“Of course. Let her sleep for a while longer, but if you need anything else, let me know. Alright?”

“Got it. Thanks for checking in.”

“Hey, no problem. It’s part of my job, after all.”

With a final wave to each other, Hannah slowly closed the door as Abbie left.

“That… went surprisingly well,” Hannah said.

Melly breathed a sigh of relief. She felt herself unstick enough to pull herself down, swinging herself around to drop back onto the floor feet-first.

“Yeah,” Melly said back. “I thought I’d have to be invisible or something for her to not see me there. But… guess not.”

“So… what now?”

Melly paused.

“What do you mean?” she asked back.

“What do _I_ mean? Mels, I’m pretty sure it’s an unavoidable fact at this point that you have superpowers. More specifically, Spider-Man powers, or at least some variation of them. This is some major, life changing stuff. You’ve got to figure out what you’re gonna do with them… if you want to do anything. Your powers, your call.”

Melly stood in silence for a minute, thinking it over. So far, she’d been focused on dealing with the various ability-related shenanigans of the past few minutes, but as she began to think forward to what she should do, her mind also began to drift backwards, pulling back the memories and hopes of her childhood. There was a lot of scary stuff in the world, from villains roaming the streets to the forces beyond Earth, some of which she had seen attack in her lifetime. She had always loved superheroes, the ones who were there to stop them, but she had told herself long ago to keep moving forward through whatever happened, that there wasn’t anything she could do to change any of it.

But now… maybe there was.

“What am I gonna do?” Melly finally spoke as she turned to look at Hannah, a spark of light shining behind her eyes.

“I’m gonna be a superhero.”


	4. Swing

“Okay, so do you have everything you said that you were gonna need for this?”

“I think so. Elbow pads, knee pads, an expendable pair of shoes…”

Melly and Hannah stood together, hidden in an alleyway a few blocks away from the university. It had been a few days since the ‘Thing’, what the two of them had taken to calling the weird events of that night, had happened, and the two of them had taken to testing out Melly’s new powers in between their classes. They had checked all the boxes for the standard Spider-Man package, from strength and agility checks to wall climbing, but they had finally come around to testing out the power that was exclusive to Melly herself: the magic webs.

“I think we’ve geared you up about as much as we can,” Hannah said. “At least, without having access to actual hero-level tech. But, just to check again… are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah!” Melly replied. “I mean, I’m glad you’re worried about me, but I think that we’ve established that I’m way more durable now. Even then, we still bought the pads just to be safe, remember?”

“Because bike pads are gonna keep you from getting scuffed up while you’re catapulting yourself through the city at who-knows-what speed.”

Despite a lack of high-tech solutions, Melly and Hannah had made do with what they could find for the former’s first costume, if it could be called that. In addition to the bike pads, Melly had also put on a sturdy pair of jeans and a comfortable sweatshirt. To top it off, they had managed to find a simple, undetailed mask at one of the temporary Halloween stores that tended to pop up around the current time of year.

Melly shuffled in place for a moment. A part of her shared the same hesitation as Hannah, though the other, louder part of herself compelled her to go through with the idea.

“Sure, but how else am I gonna figure out if any of this works?” Melly countered. “We went back and watched a bunch of videos of both Spider-Men swinging around, and it shouldn't be that much different with the webs that I’ve got. I’d like to think that I’m really good at picking up on the details as I go.”

“Says the one who didn’t notice that her eyes had changed color for three straight days.”

“...shut up.”

Sure enough, as Melly had found out much later than she would’ve liked to admit, her eyes had changed color, from their former brown to a dull but distinct red. Melly and Hannah had guessed that it was another side effect from whatever magic weirdness Red had picked up from the Thing, though they were still in the guesswork phase when it came to figuring out the specifics.

Melly looked up, glancing at the walls of the two buildings on each side of the alley and towards their roofs. Getting herself up there would be the first step, and that was easy enough. It would be what she was going to try and do afterwards that would be the real experiment of the day.

“Oh! I almost forgot--” Hannah interrupted Melly’s thought. She reached down, fishing something out of her pocket and handing it to Melly. “It’s a wireless earpiece. Not high-tech or anything like that-- I literally got it at a random corner store-- but it’ll help to keep your hands free once you’ve got the hang of swinging around.”

“Glad you’re giving me a vote of confidence,” Melly said, taking the earpiece. She took a moment to sync it to her phone before putting it on. “Guess there’s nothing else to do at this point except to get the ball rolling.”

Melly walked over to one of the nearby walls, pausing before she reached it. With a small jump, she pushed herself upwards, landing and sticking to a spot several feet off of the ground.  
“Wish me luck!” she called back down to Hannah, climbing up towards the roof.

Reaching the roof didn’t take much effort on Melly’s part, given her newfound strength and wall-climbing ability. As she stood up, she glanced out towards the center of Centrum City. It was newer, as larger cities tend to go, having only expanded to its current scale within the past several decades. Even in that short amount of time, it had exploded out into a thriving metropolis to rival the likes of New York City or Los Angeles. Melly had always been fascinated by how meticulously planned out the city had been, with its entirety forming a roughly circular shape when looked at from above. She wasn’t exactly going to be able to see that outside of a map or image on her own, but if her plan worked… she’d be able to see Centrum City from a whole new point of view.

There wasn’t any point in standing still and letting herself overthink it. She was going to have to just throw herself in head-first on this one. What could possibly go wrong?

She picked a building in the distance, pointing a finger towards it and casting out a web. A small flash of light appeared before the line shot forward, attaching a few floors below the top of the building. Then, bracing herself, she flicked her hand, the line going taunt as she willed it to pull her forward.

With a sudden lurch, Melly was pulled forward along the webline’s path, already halfway to the building by the time she was able to flip herself around. Her spider sense peaked in intensity as the city rushed by, whatever messages or warnings it was trying to give her becoming scrambled as they came and went too fast for her to process. 

_Crap!_ She yelled in her head, having not intended to pull herself along so quickly. Swinging her hands around in front of her out of panic, the web flashed a bit before disappearing entirely.

That was something new.

Though the new development solved the problem of smashing into a skyscraper, Melly now found herself beginning to move downwards, on a collision course with the street below.

_Okay, okay, okay,_ her thoughts were racing through her mind now, trying to figure out what to do. She steadied herself, glancing around as she picked up speed. _Web, I need another web!_

She pointed her hand forward, aiming above her at a nearby building. She couldn’t see where it was going to land; she’d have to trust her spider-sense to pull this off. Casting the webline, she closed her eyes, waiting for a few moments before she felt the line pull taunt.

_Swing._

The momentum from the fall carried her through the air, and soon enough she found herself arcing upwards along its path. Reaching the peak, she let go, soaring forward into a slow, midair flip. Once she was upright again, she brought her hands up, casting another line and pulling herself forward.

“Yeah…” Melly said to herself, breathless. “Yeah!”

She continued, casting web after web as she moved with increasing speed through the city. Her hands seemed to move faster than her thoughts, propelled by her senses as they directed her where to go, what to do.

Flinging herself upward from a massive swing, she hung in the air for a moment, looking out over Centrum City. _Her_ city. She had been excited about being a hero before, but now that she was here, hanging above it all… she knew for certain that she’d be able to do it.

Starting to descend once again, she shot another web forward, pulling herself along it.

She could think of what she was going to call herself later. For now, she just wanted to enjoy the wonder of the moment, and of the hero that she’d always wanted to be.


End file.
